[closed]

[sistershoggoth]

CHARACTERS: Alnair Brood, Asuka, Murphy, Bellamy.
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY(S) :041/042
SUMMARY: Annie organizing other people's lives for them because that's the only way she can deal with her own.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

Comments

[sistershoggoth]

[ She's smiling at him, the slimy feeling of her attention crawling down him. ]

The bit where I didn't give a shit. Luci and Beth got their asses up with half this whining. C'mon dickhead, come do something good for yourself. It's like eating your vegetables.

[ She fiddles out a cigarette, starts letting that smell drift over him. She'll stand here and chain smoke all day if that's what it takes. ]

[deployed]

[ In contrast, Bellamy's attention is a tug at the end of a tether. It might be less compelling, but he's no less insistent than Annie. ]

She's persistent.

[ That doesn't actually need to be said. ]

It won't be that different from helping me train last time we were on the Station.

[wrackful]

[It's the worst team up. Bellamy calls Annie persistent, but Murphy's well-experienced in just how persistent Bellamy could be. He doesn't much like being the target of it, and for a moment he strongly regrets introducing them to each other.]

You were training.

[Murphy was just nearby. And watching, which had been exhausting enough without getting directly involved, honestly.]

And you know, if you don't like me whining, you don't have to listen to it.

[The not listening option being leaving, obviously.]

[sistershoggoth]

What kind of friend would I be if I didn't give your whining at least a cursory listen?

[ She's coming. She's gonna come sit on him. ]

[deployed]

I've gotten used to it.

[ Or alternately he's gotten so used to having Murphy's presence tucked into the back of his mind that the whining doesn't grate the way it used to. ]

Murphy, come on.

[ But also, he's not going to save Murphy from Annie. He stays parked by the door. ]

[wrackful]

[Murphy doesn't contest Annie's use of the word "friend", but he clearly isn't used to the concept being quite like this, or maybe just not like her. He makes no move to shift away, which means he totally gets sat on, and the resulting reaction is a bursting mix of soft outrage and surprise as he tries, too late, to curl away and knock her off.

It comes out half what, cut in half by a kind of squawking noise as he squirms.]

Is this payback for Shril? If I paint myself like a nuclear lizard again will you leave me alone?

[Even if he's thinking more of the last half hour on the waypoint than the contest: Annie, Bellamy and Noctis getting their hands dirty while Murphy just pushed forward and forward, barely pausing.]

[sistershoggoth]

Absolutely not.

[ She responds chirpily, all but ashing her cigarette on his face. ]

I mean, if you wanna dress up like a lizard, far fuckin' be it from me to stop you. You're just kinda fuckin' puny, and I figure I can fix it.

[ Possibly more telling about her than anything else: her need to train, her need to prepare, like she can fix the inevitable terrible deaths of everyone around her. ]

[deployed]

It doesn't matter how big he is, [ Bellamy interrupts, though he knows from long experience with Octavia that talking about someone as if they aren't in the room isn't going to be well-received. ] He's got other strengths.

[ Bellamy had seen them all in action before. He'd been on the receiving end of them. He knows how resilient Murphy is in a fight. ]

You just need to work on a few things. There's no harm in getting faster.

[ Or learning how to punch better. Lincoln's lessons would be useful for Murphy too. ]

[wrackful]

[Honestly, there's a little ripple of surprise for Bellamy sticking up for him like that. He glances at the other man, but it's brief. Easy to get over when he's still dealing with being sat on.]

Yeah. My bug tells me when we're all going to die.

[Other strengths, because he can't actually think of any that would be on a par with what Bellamy can do. What Annie can do. It's a dose of reality in the context of the topic. He's survived through a hell of a lot, but it's always been through endurance, tenacity. Being stronger, faster - how much of the shit the ground had thrown at him would he have been able to avoid? Would the bug have gotten him through the store on Shril, if he hadn't had three fighters with him to take out the aliens?]

[sistershoggoth]

[ She rolls her eyes expansively. ]

"Having a strong body is the first step to actuating any plan." [ Articulating with care, as though parroting someone who had said that to her enough times. ] Or in your case, keeping yourself from getting murdered in the middle of one of your fuckin' pre-cog fits.

[ She gets off him with an unnecessarily heavily bounce, drop in center of gravity and then up on her feet. ]